I emailed PG about this a week ago, his response: "It just seems to." Normally loading the vote URL directly doesn't work because votes that don't have a HN r

I emailed PG about this a week ago, his response: "It just seems to." Normally loading the vote URL directly doesn't work because votes that don't have a HN referrer don't get counted. By submitting the URL to HN and getting people to click through a HN referrer gets sent making the votes look legitimate.